Free Republic

Gov. Roy Cooper leads Michael Whatley by four percentage points in a new poll from Public Policy Polling, which shows a race that remains competitive as voters begin to tune into the campaign. While national attention has increasingly turned to high-profile Senate races in Maine and Texas, the newly released poll suggests that Whatley, the former RNC and NC GOP chairman, still has an opportunity to contest a race that forecasters say favors Cooper. The PPP poll, released on Monday, surveyed 759 North Carolina voters earlier this month and found Cooper leading the race by 48% to 44%, with a...

Things just keep getting worse for the Democratic Party, and at this rate, they may need a new metaphor because "keeps getting worse" barely covers it anymore. We already told you the polls are tightening heading into the midterms in November, which was bad enough on its own. Now it turns out the party's situation is so much worse than we already know, and the people running the show apparently don’t want you to know just how bad it really is n a bizarre move, the Democratic National Committee required its senior leadership to sign non-disclosure agreements before a private...

Denmark will ban burkas in schools and universities as part of a plan to tackle what it calls 'parallel societies'. The garment worn by some Muslim women is already banned in public places in the Scandinavian country, but the move would now expand the order into classrooms across Denmark. In Denmark, the term 'parallel societies' refers to residential areas where more than half of inhabitants are from an immigrant background. The ban on full-face coverings was introduced in Denmark in 2018, with those found to break the rule forced to pay a £1,300 fine. Despite Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen's move...

U.S. home prices surged to an all-time high in June according to a National Association of Realtors (NAR) report released last Thursday. The report found that the median existing home price in June reached $440,660, an increase of 1.8 percent year-over-year and a new high according to the NAR’s chief economist Lawrence Yun. Housing sales declined to 2.4 percent month-over-month in June and 2.8 percent, seasonally adjusted, since June 2025. The NAR’s Housing Affordability Index is up 6.8 points since June 2025 at 102.3, signaling that home prices are more affordable relative to the median family income. Yet the index...

This is "Ashley." Ashley thinks he can do a better job than the Nazi-tattoo guy at representing Maine in the United States Senate. MODERATOR: "What qualifications do you have to serve in the U.S. Senate?" Maine Democrat Ashley Webb: "I'm a songwriter and I write my own books." MODERATOR: David Costello said he's for Medicare for All. Is everybody? KLEBEN: Yes. DICKERSON: It's incredible. WEBB: I'm actually on Medicare. MODERATOR: Oh...ok.

More voters would be more likely to support a democratic socialist candidate than a Make America Great Again supporter or a candidate endorsed by President Donald Trump, the CNBC All-America Economic Survey released Friday found. The survey’s findings come as democratic socialist candidates win Democratic primaries across the country following the November election of New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani. The shift has become a lightning rod for Republicans, who are aggressively branding Democrats as communists. The results indicate that even with a number of self-described democratic socialists on the ballot, Democrats will have the upper hand heading into November’s...

When Graham Platner dropped out of Maine's Senate race, Democrats figured they'd dodged a bullet. All they had to do was find a competent replacement to take on Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine), and the seat was theirs for the taking. That was the narrative, anyway. Then their candidates took the stage Thursday night for the first primary debate, and the bullet found them anyway. The debate, hosted by News Center Maine on July 16, featured four candidates in the first hour: former State Senate President Troy Jackson, Secretary of State Shenna Bellows, former congressional aide Jordan Wood, and Dr. Nirav...

Washington moves to deprive Tehran of much needed revenue, raising pressure on a suffering population DUBAI—President Trump is betting that reimposing the blockade on Iran and revoking its right to sell oil will throttle the regime’s economy and convince it to release its hold on the Strait of Hormuz. Tehran is betting it can hold out. The danger is, in the short term at least, that the renewed economic pressure hurts ordinary Iranians and leaves a destructive stalemate in the waterway. U.S. Central Command announced strikes on Iranian targets for a sixth straight day on Thursday. The collapse of the...

President Donald Trump is pressing ahead with a sweeping effort to reshape the nation’s election system, relying on executive actions, agency shakeups and pressure on Congress after courts blocked some of his earlier initiatives. Critics, particularly Democrats, have described the strategy as “death by a thousand cuts,” arguing that the administration is gradually reshaping election policy hrough multiple fronts instead of one sweeping overhaul. Last week, Trump gutted the little-known Election Assistance Commission, a move that drew concern from election officials who warned it could weaken cybersecurity support for state and local election offices. The commission overhaul is only one...

This past spring, Blue America suffered yet another critical blow without much in the way of comment: Standard Oil of New Jersey fled the state for Texas.AdvertisementOf course, it’s not called Standard Oil anymore. Following several takeovers and mergers, it’s now known as ExxonMobil. But it’s still the same company founded nearly a century and a half ago as the jewel in the crown of John D. Rockefeller’s industrial empire. And now it’s gone.On March 10 of this year, the company’s board voted unanimously to make the move. The decision was put to a shareholder vote on May 27. No...

A few weeks ago, I reviewed Eric Metaxas’s bestselling book Revolution: The Birth of the Greatest Nation in the History of the World. Since then, it has remained on the New York Times bestselling list and is currently ranked number two in nonfiction behind Maggie Haberman’s TDS offering, Regime Change.One would have thought a book published during the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence would be stocked and displayed prominently at Barnes & Noble. Instead, during his frequent appearances on Steve Bannon’s War Room program, the author testifies that the nation’s leading storefront bookseller doesn’t typically have copies on...

President Trump spoke to the nation last night about serious problems with American elections. You could watch the speech live on Fox News, Newsmax, C-SPAN, and PBS. ABC, NBC, and CNN refused to air the speech on their live broadcasts, while CBS and MSNBC managed to air just a little bit before abandoning it to spout their own opinions (including what they laughably call “fact checks”). That’s the state of America today. It was a good speech but ended (I thought) weakly. Had the networks (some of which still have a free gig on the public airways) run the speech,...

Iran has told its citizens to turn off their air conditioning during peak hours as the country's power grid came under strain amid US strikes. Tehran's energy ministry said that the power restrictions were necessary 'to help ensure a stable electricity supply in the southern provinces, which are currently facing extreme heat and attacks on electricity supply facilities.' Temperatures in the capital were expected to hit triple digits Friday, with highs of 102F on Saturday and Sunday.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cih-Dnvh9p0

Ghana has recorded 14 arrests linked to false news and offensive speech in less than 16 months, nearly double the number documented during the previous administration’s entire eight-year tenure, according to the Media Foundation for West Africa (MFWA). The rise has triggered a sharp debate in one of West Africa’s most stable democracies over whether authorities are simply enforcing long-standing laws in a new digital environment, or edging into a more restrictive approach to public speech. The controversy carries added political weight because President John Mahama, while in opposition in 2022, warned that using state power to intimidate dissent was...

Lampedusa Migrant Production: The Gospel According to PR StuntsAgain, Lampedusa serves a Vatican backdrop for a media driven message where visuals overshadowed the realities of illegal migration reality.More Production than PilgrimageThe papal immigration road show is on the move again, as Leo hopscotched from the Canary Islands to beleaguered Lampedusa Island peddling his globalist sentimentalist slop, “this is a place where gestures speak louder than words. But for gestures to be human, they need a heart.” Lampedusa, the Italian island in the Mediterranean Sea is Europe’s primary entry point for illegal migrants crossing from North Africa. It tees up poignantly...

Bottoms 51, Jackson 44

Iranian strikes on Friday hit a power and water desalination plant in Kuwait, damaging one of the key sources of drinking water in the small desert nation. It’s the latest attack on essential infrastructure across the Middle East that have exposed extreme vulnerabilities in one of the world’s driest regions, which relies almost exclusively on technology to produce freshwater that sustains cities, hotels, industry and some agriculture. In Kuwait, about 90% of drinking water comes from desalination, along with roughly 86% in Oman and about 70% in Saudi Arabia. The process removes salt from seawater, most commonly by pushing it...

The potential spread of massive water and electricity-consuming data centers into Florida has sparked fierce opposition from thousands of residents and drawn dividing lines between its most powerful politicians. But, experts say, the projects popping up in Miami-Dade are unlike those that grab headlines for fouling drinking water and driving up power bills — for now. The best example yet of Florida’s pushback against the spread of data centers may have been Thursday’s Palm Beach County Commission meeting, where officials gave a firm no to a proposed project called “Project Tango” that would have placed a data center using as...

ROCKFORD, IL — Local man Curt Jennings said he was carefully holding off on forming any opinions about a new movie until political commentators informed him whether it is woke or epically based. Jennings steadfastly refused to even watch the trailer of Christopher Nolan's The Odyssey until his preferred online personalities issued a definitive ruling on the film. "Some of my friends are all saying it's good, but is it based?" said Jennings. "What if I enjoyed the movie, only to later discover that it is not based? What if it is, in fact, woke? Can you imagine? I, for...